Nowhere to Hide (Halden University #1)

Chapter 1

one

SLOANE

The trick to walking into a place like Halden University is to pretend you’re not bothered by walking into a place like Halden University.

The look I’m going for is girl who belongs without trying and who won’t embarrass her family (again), which equates to a cream cashmere sweater over dark jeans, soft leather boots, and small gold hoops — because anything more reads as trying too hard.

As I walk down the corridor of Sterling House with my suitcase, every door is open and every room is its own little scene of move-in day chaos. Through it all, I keep my eyes forward, nodding at people the way a Halden Girl nods at people, like someone with places to be.

Which, in my case, is Room 214.

The door is propped open a little with a suitcase, music is playing inside — something with a beat that feels both a bit too aggressive for eight in the morning and something I’ll need to get used to — and a girl’s voice is carrying over it at full volume.

“No, Mom, the suite doesn’t have a tub, it has a shower,” she says, and I can practically see the eye roll. “Yes, an actual shower, like normal people have.”

I push the door open fully and drag my case inside.

My roommate is standing in the middle of a war zone. There are open suitcases that look like they detonated, and the fallout is a tangled heap of clothing on the bed… the floor… the… everywhere.

She’s just as much of a mess, with messy dark curls in a chin-length bob, an oversized sweater that’s slipping off one shoulder, and only one sock. But it all feels deliberate, a sort of style that, combined with her bright blue eyes, could end a boy’s life on contact.

She glances up, and her face lights up. “Mom. Mom. I can’t have this conversation right now, my roommate just walked in.” She mouths sorry at me. “Yes, she looks normal—”

I wave, keeping it small and Halden-appropriate.

“—okay bye. Yes, I love you. Yes. Okay. Yes. Bye. Bye.” She drops the phone onto the bed and throws both arms out like I’ve walked in at the finale of a musical.

“Uh, hi?” I say, unsure, but trying not to show it.

“You must be Sloane.” She stands and crosses the room. “Oh my God. Tell me if you hate me already, because I want to know where we stand.”

The laugh jumps out of me. “I’ve been in the room eleven seconds, so I haven’t really had time to form an opinion.”

“Plenty of time.” She pulls me into a hug and then lets me go. “I’m Ivy. I’m a mess. I’m very sorry in advance for being the problem in this room most of the time.”

“You’re not a mess,” I say on reflex, although she seems like a mess, my voice hitting the exact register I’ve practiced in mirrors for the past few months. “I’m Sloane.”

“Sloane.” She tries it out, like she’s trying to divine my personality. “I can work with that. Now, tell me, are you one of those terrifyingly organized people?”

“I’m—”

“Because, disclosure time,” she says. “I have never unpacked anything in my life. My mother has unpacked for me every time we’ve gone anywhere, which I just realized is humiliating to say out loud.”

“I’d feel the same way.”

“Rude,” she says, grinning, slow and delighted and a little wicked. “We are going to be just fine.”

I love her immediately, and it feels mutual.

This is a problem.

As we make small talk, I set to work on my half of the room exactly as I’ve been picturing it — clothes organized by category, sweaters folded neatly, shirts on hangers, shoes paired along the closet floor — while Ivy continues her Jackson Pollock approach to unpacking.

“What’s your major?” she asks, chucking a bra at a pile.

“Communications,” I say. “You?”

“Double major, art history and studio art.” She holds up a dress, considers it, flings it toward the closet. “My dad has not recovered from the shame. Are your parents close to here?”

“Rye, New York. Dad’s a lawyer. Mom does—” I pause, thinking as I line up a row of sweaters. “—I don’t know what my mom does, but she’s on a lot of boards. And I’ve got one brother who’s in politics in Boston.”

“God, everyone has the same parents in this place.” She groans. “Except for me it’s Connecticut and Dad works in finance.”

“Mother?” I say.

“Uh… pills and tennis… and I also have an older brother who goes here and who is insufferable.” A pause. “I mean, I say that with love. Or seventy percent love and thirty percent, you know, the thing where your brother is the family’s favorite and everyone knows it but nobody says it out loud.”

“Oh,” I say, because yes.

“He’ll show up at some point to ‘help me settle in,’” she says, air-quoting. “Which means reorganizing my entire life, because he’s physically incapable of leaving anything alone.”

My phone buzzes on the desk.

Mom: We found a spot. Lot B.

I sigh and look up at Ivy. “That’s my parents. I should get the rest of my stuff.”

“Want help?” Ivy says, already looking for her other sock.

“Oh, no.” It comes out too fast, and I smile to soften it. “I’ll be right back.”

She doesn’t push, and I like her more for not pushing, clearly reading between the lines due to the speed of my refusal. Then she shrugs and flops back on her bed, already scrolling on her phone as I grab my keys and go before I have to explain anything else.

I head down and find that Lot B is still chaos.

My parents dropped me and the first load of stuff an hour ago, then went hunting for a parking spot.

And when I find their car, Dad has already put the last of my stuff on the ground and is putting the seats back in place now that transport daughter to college is taken care of.

“Room okay?” he says, giving me the small, closed smile he does.

“Room’s good,” I say.

“Roommate?”

“Nice.”

“Good.” He nods. “Your mother wants a word.”

A word.

I sigh again and head for my mother, who’s standing by the passenger door with her sunglasses pushed into her hair and arms crossed. She looks, as always, like she stepped out of a catalog, after having been styled by some sort of personal stylist.

“Come here,” she says, as her arms open about six inches.

I step closer. “I should go—”

“Let me look at you.” She holds me at arm’s length, eyes doing the quick audit. “Good.”

“Thanks.”

“Sterling’s a good house,” she says, glancing up at my building. “Susan’s daughter was in Sterling.”

“I remember.”

“She made wonderful friends.” She lets out a dreamy sigh. “And she met Hugh at Halden.”

“I remember that too, Mom.”

She pauses for a second, and I know what’s coming next.

I’ve been bracing for it since this morning, and she’s held it in until now, which is world-record-breaking restraint from my mother.

It’s a slightly different variant of the same little talk we’ve had at least a dozen times since I finished high school.

“Sloane.”

“Yeah?”

“I want this year to be special for you.”

“Me too.”

“You have every reason to do well here. You’re smart, you’re charming, you come from a good family, and you’re following in my footsteps.” She waves her own sentimentality off. “Halden rewards a certain kind of young woman, Sloane. Someone with poise and discretion.”

“I know.”

“It has a long memory, this place.”

“I know, Mom.” My restraint cracks. “I know, okay?”

“I’m not bringing up last year.”

Oh, she’s definitely bringing up last year.

“I only mean — last year taught you something, didn’t it? About how quickly a situation can impact your life.” She says your but means our. “And I’m not saying it was your fault. I’m not. I just think we both learned the value of discretion with a boy until you’re sure.”

“I was sure, Mom,” I say, quietly, trying to keep my voice level. “I didn’t ask for Harrison to do any of that to me.”

“I know, Sloane.” She touches my cheek. “I know you didn’t, but you need to learn from it. Because you’re too bright to get tangled up in something like that again.”

I smile. It’s a good smile. I’ve practiced this one too.

She takes my silence as agreement, then kisses my head, lecture successfully delivered. “Go now, and I’ll call you next week.”

I nod and step away, and Dad hands me the last box and duffel bag that will carry me to freedom. Then I walk back toward Sterling House, trying not to well up in front of the Whitmores — who go to the same country club as my parents — or anyone else.

I’m halfway across the quad when my duffel bag dies.

Or, more precisely, the strap.

It gives up with one clean pop, and the bag lists sideways off my shoulder and hits the ground. Then, because the universe has a sense of timing, the main zipper decides it’s done too, and I immediately regret overstuffing the bag and forcing it closed.

The bag opens like a clam in the middle of the Sterling House courtyard.

Everything comes out.

Everything.

Because of course my underwear was in the duffel bag.

A pink bralette skids across the bricks. A pair of black lace briefs lands about eighteen inches from a dad in a Halden quarter-zip. Three more pairs fan out around my feet like I’ve performed a magic trick I did not rehearse.

I start sweating.

Move, I think. Pick it all up. Do not make a sound. Do not make a face.

I crouch and start scooping. Hair falls into my eyes and I shove it back with a wrist, because my fingers are full of lingerie in the middle of a courtyard, while a woman somewhere behind me says oh, honey with the specific pity that makes me want to die.

A pair of sneakers stops next to my bag.

“You know,” says a male voice above me, “if you’d used a pair of these to tie the handles together, we wouldn’t be here.”

I look up.

He’s so tall I have to tip my head back to find his face, which is infuriatingly too attractive, with dark curls and steel-blue eyes that are currently committing the crime of looking amused.

I snap back at him, “Or if I’d stuffed a pair in your mouth, I wouldn’t have to listen to bad jokes from complete strangers.”

It comes out fast and more than a little loud, in a voice I haven’t used in nine months. It’s the old Sloane, the pre-Harrison-scandal-and-pre-Halden-Girl-Sloane, and my comeback registers on his face.